Lehman Brothers Is Undead

Lehman Brothers’ spectacular bankruptcy two years ago marked the worst of the financial crisis. But the firm is not dead and gone. Take an elevator to the 40th floor of the Time & Life Building in Manhattan and you’ll find the old logo plastered across a gleaming front desk as men in expensive suits swarm. Lehman’s main holdings were sold off two years ago, the rest was thought to be headed for liquidation. Instead, a team was brought in to manage the portfolio and fully expects to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy as a much smaller but profitable company with a new name: Lamco. The team held on to Lehman’s remaining assets, instead of selling them during the worst part of the recession, and now the portfolio is valued at about $50 billion, up from $33 billion. It’s made some creative, unexpected moves, like injecting hundreds of millions of dollars into banks in Utah and Delaware to prevent their failure.